Business in brief: Trump has big plans for offshore oil development

Tuesday

Jan 9, 2018 at 2:01 AM

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The Trump administration has set in motion a grand scheme to lure energy companies to explore for oil and gas across virtually all of America’s outer continental shelf, a deep marine domain encompassing billions of acres of ocean bottom.

Drawing a distinction from the Obama administration’s concerns about climate change and restricting offshore fossil energy development, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke cast President Donald Trump’s offshore drilling campaign as a study in American strength. “We’re embarking on a new path for energy dominance in America,” Zinke said. “We are going to become the strongest energy superpower.”

Yet like other marquee directives Trump has issued in the past year to empower the domestic fossil fuel industry, the offshore plan may not bear out its grand ambitions. Many energy analysts already are predicting that exorbitant costs, flat prices, civic opposition, climate concerns and new transportation technology make major new offshore drilling enterprises, at least outside the Gulf of Mexico, unlikely.

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